Print on demand is a commonly-used term that refers to the digital printing technology that can allow a complete book to be printed and bound in a matter of minutes. Print on demand makes it easy and cost-effective to produce books one or two at a time or in small lots, rather than in larger print runs of several hundred or several thousand.

Print on demand actually has a number of applications. There are commercial and academic publishers that use print on demand to print advance reading copies. The also use print on demand when they can't justify the expense of producing and warehousing a sizeable print run so that they can still keep backlist books available.

Some independent publishers use print on demand as a more of an economical fulfillment method. They trade the lower startup costs against the smaller per-book profits. Due to the economies of scale, digitally printed books have a higher per unit production cost than books produced in large runs that use an offset presses.

There is also the print on demand based publishing service providers that offer services for a fee. Some people describe this type of print on demand publishing as either vanity publishing or self-publishing. Vanity presses have a little bit of a bad reputation because the books that they put into print have nothing to do with the quality of the material and are only published because the author paid for it to happen.

Strictly speaking, print on demand is really just a term for a kind of printing technology. Print on demand isnt a description of any kind of business model. There have been some changes in the last several years and now print on demand has started to mean some very specific things.

The two main problems with print on demand are inadequate selectivity and editing. Some print on demand publishers accepts everyone who submits while others do more screening. They dont usually claim to be expert enough to ensure high quality. Some print on demand publishers only perform a light copy edit. This leads to releasing books that are essentially unedited.